


Natasha Romanoff & Clint Barton Are Experts In Breaking Mind Control

by TheoMiller



Series: something bigger [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 09:05:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1893300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheoMiller/pseuds/TheoMiller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Steve Rogers found Bucky Barnes and joined the competition for Weirdest Post-SHIELD Job as a professional mind control therapist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Natasha Romanoff & Clint Barton Are Experts In Breaking Mind Control

“Hey,” Natasha said, and Steve looked up, pulling his earbuds out. “You know, everyone else just pulls one out,” she said.

Steve looked down at the earbuds dangling from his hand. Then, “Is that what you came here to say?”

“I have some intel for you.”

“From who?” Steve asked.

“Stalon,” she said. “She’s running a soda fountain now – I think there’s a contest for Weirdest Post-SHIELD Job – but she’s still one of the best.”

He took the file, and flipped it open with one hand. It was slipping from his numb fingers moments later, and Natasha caught it. She stepped closer to him, a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Steve,” she murmured. “Are you ready to do this? I can handle it if you’re not.”

“Where is he now?” Steve said firmly a moment later, and tucked his earbuds into his pocket.

Natasha offered him a half-smile. “That’s more like it. Come on, Clint’s waiting.”

“Clint?” said Steve, following. “I thought he was—”

“He’s back,” she said. “Still a little abnormal, psychologically speaking, but then again, he’s always been like that.” She led the way around a tight corner into an alley where a sedan was idling.

When Natasha opened the passenger door, Clint lowered his sunglasses so he could look over them at Steve. “You sure you’re ready to rehabilitate a mind controlled killer, Cap?” he said. “You know what they say about old dogs and new tricks. Maybe leave it to the experts.”

“Okay, I hardly think you two ‘rehabilitating’ each other makes you experts,” Steve said, as he climbed into the backseat. “Dabblers, maybe.”

“We should start a club,” said Natasha.

Clint snickered as he pulled out of the alley and added, “Yeah, and a Confused Super-Powered Geriatric club.”

“I don’t think two people are enough for a club,” Nat said.

“Coulson’s, like, seventy, that’s gotta count.”                                                                                            

“Coulson’s not that old!” Steve said hotly, having learnt of what Coulson went through after Loki and now feeling _more_ guilty somehow.

“Dude, he got those trading cards when he was a kid. They tested the serum on him when he was in the Rangers, he volunteered, but it didn’t do much, just slowed his aging a bit. But it also killed one in ten subjects – he got lucky – so they ditched it.”

Steve stared. “That wasn’t in SHIELD’s files,” he said.

“Oh, hell no,” Clint said, pulling onto Route 9A. “You kidding me? They _buried_ that, the only record was a paper file that Fury burned personally.”

“Huh,” said Steve.

Natasha turned in her seat to face Clint. “Hang on, you said superpowers.”

“Didn’t I tell you about our trip to New Mexico? No? Okay, so, while you were on Stark-sitting duty, Phil and I got sent to deal with Big’n’Blond, and naturally I was napping in the backseat—”

“Naturally,” Steve said drily, and Natasha laughed.

“— _anyway_ , we stopped for gas and Phil went in to get a pack of donuts. Long story short, he stopped two robbers with shotguns with nothing but a bag of flour. No joke, he handed over his gun and used a bag of flour instead. It’s like that time—”

“—with the tie, in Bogota,” she completed. “Steve, you should’ve been there, Clint got captured _again_ —”

“Hey, I’m an awesome damsel in distress,” Clint rejoined.

“You _do_ swoon a lot around Phil. Anyway, Steve, there’s this group of smugglers, and they’ve got Clint tied to a chair while they argue about what to with him, and I’m in the vents trying to figure out how to subdue all of them before the one with a gun shoots Clint, and before I can there’s a commotion out in the hall and they leave, and I’m not an idiot, I know who’s out there, so I high-tail it to the getaway vehicle when—”

Clint turned around in his seat, leaving Natasha to control the steering wheel (she looked at Steve in the rearview mirror rolled her eyes) and the archer continued seamlessly, “—Coulson comes in, tases the dude, and he’s looking kinda ruffled—for Coulson, anyway—so I was like ‘hey, Phil, where’s your tie?’ and he goes ‘I lost it. You don’t want to know how’ and then he asked me to do a math problem, guess I looked kinda banged up, think I had a head laceration,” he directed that to Nat.

“Head laceration was Kolkata, you had a black eye.”

“Thought that was Jakarta?”

“Jakarta was the bullet graze.”

“Oh, okay,” Clint said.

“So what exactly do you contribute to the missions?” Steve said, grinning.

Clint narrowed his eyes. “You, I do not remember you being this snarky,” he said. “Uh, Nat, that’s not our exit.”

“Keep your foot on the pedal, Barton,” she ordered. “We’re gonna cut through Leonia and Paterson, it’s way faster. Keep telling Steve about your inability to escape a mission unscathed.”

“Right, so, I’m bitching him out for the slow rescue instead of doing the math, and he goes, ‘If you don’t answer, I’m going to assume you’re concussed and go through with my contingency plan’.”

“What was his contingency plan?”

“Shoot me with the dead guy’s gun and run for it,” Clint said.

Natasha snorted. “Cop!”

Clint whirled around and put his hands on the wheel, and Natasha quickly sat back and buckled her seatbelt. “You two do this a lot,” Steve said, looking between them.

Nat caught his gaze in the rearview mirror again, as Clint went past the cop with a suave nod. “It’s a long story. Tell him about what Phil did with the tie, Clint, I wanna see if he’s got any idea how Phil did that.”

“Okay, so, get this. We collect the smugglers, right, to get them prosecuted through not-so-proper channels, and they all have head trauma. As in, hit over the head with something heavy. But since it was supposed to be a simple extraction and he’s weird about killing people, Phil only brought his Taser.”

“How many?” Steve asked.

Clint glanced to Nat, who said, “Seventeen, not including perimeter and the gun guy. And all we found was a tie, one of Phil’s ties, falling apart.”

“Huh,” said Steve. “So, a bag of flour and a tie. I wish I’d gotten to know Coulson a bit better, before…”

“Before he died and Fury went all Dr. Frankenstein on him? Yeah, he’s in total agreement.”

“Where is he?” Nat asked. “Still dealing with—”

“Yeah,” said Clint.

A tense atmosphere settled over the car. After a moment, Clint cleared his throat. “Is this twisty bit right?”

“Yeah, go into the loop,” said Nat.

“Speaking of in the loop,” Clint said, “Who’s your intel? You said reliable, so I’m guessing it’s someone I know. Nat knows everyone,” he added to Steve.

“Not so much anymore, they’re all dead. Again. Anyway, it was Stalon.”

Clint squinted at the signs. “Stay on I-80? Wait, No Favors Girl gave you the intel?”

“No Favors Girl did, indeed, give me the intel.”

“What happened to no favors?”

“She did it on her own. Turns out, one of her old coworkers is a park ranger up there, and she recognised Barnes. Says he’s been hanging around some of the usual squatting sites. Sounds like he’s staying put, she’s been bringing him food. Big fan of you, Steve - Stalon's contact, I mean, not Stalon. Stalon has a weird history crush on Agent Carter, though."

Steve was flipping through the file. "And you're sure this isn't a dead end? I don't like leaving New York to Tony, not when he's busy engineering."

Clint snorted. "If Richard's team would do its fair share, we wouldn't need to worry." He pulled his hands back as Natasha grabbed the wheel and steered them into the turn lane.

"It's good intel, Steve. Stalon has more trust issues than Clint and I combined, she triple checks the spelling of her own name before she turns in a report."

"She's, like, famous for being meticulous," Clint said. "I asked her if I could leave my rifle with her for a day, and she made me fill out a form acknowledging that she would exercise only her available amount of effort to completing the task, and then checked it for bugs."

"How does SHIELD end up with someone who doesn't take risks?" Steve said.

"She's a desk jockey. And she's more paranoid than Fury on pot," Clint said. "I'm surprised the whole HYDRA thing didn't break her."

"She owns a soda fountain in New York where she literally plays marathons of cult TV shows, honey. She's broken."

"Cults?" Steve said. "TV shows have cults?"

Natasha tapped something into her tablet and then held it up with a picture of a sea of people dressed as Sam and Dean Winchester. "Fans of a TV show who are rather devoted and converge en masse to talk about their shared interest, often in costume."

"Like the cosplayers outside Stark Tower?" Steve said.

"Exactly," said Natasha.

"They're nice," Steve said. "A few recognised me once and offered me food."

But she was already navigating her way through the part of the site of the site dedicated to Avengers rumours. "Oh, hey, Clint, looks like we're back together."

The archer snickered. "Yeah? Did I forgive you for cheating on me with Steve?"

"Turns out you were sleeping with Stark and my fling with Steve was revenge. Oh, but it says Thor is jealous."

Steve leaned forward to look over her shoulder at the tablet. "Click on the one with Tony and Bruce," he said.

She did, and Clint took his eyes off the road for a moment so he could read it, too. “Oh my god, Tony cheated on Pepper with Bruce too?! That bastard! I was supposed to be his _only_ dude mistress. Wait. Is there a word for dude mistresses?” He added, as he redirected his attention to driving.

“Gunsel,” Steve suggested, with a wicked grin, and Clint lost the car in a sharp swerve for a moment while he recovered from that. “You all right there, Barton?”

“I don’t know why you’re so shocked he knows these things,” Nat said, as she read the torrid details of Bruce and Tony’s love affair.

Clint shook his head. “I forget he was around _normal_ army guys.”

“I grew up in the queer part of Brooklyn,” Steve said mildly, and Clint completely abandoned the wheel.

“The hell, man?”

“The various identities weren’t so defined as they are now, and the whole thing had some really sexist issues,” Steve said. “But yeah, Bucky was offered quite a bit of money to be one guy’s, ah, kept man at one point.”

“Huh,” said Clint, as he took control of the car back from Natasha again.

She returned to her tablet. “Oh, I’m trying to seduce Pepper! Apparently ‘a source close to me’—it’s hinting that it’s you, Clint—says I think Pepper deserves better than a ‘philandering philanthropist’.”

Steve set the file aside. “I bet next week, the three of us will be headlining with a steamy _ménage a trois_.”

“Phil probably wouldn’t mind so long as I took pictures,” Clint said, and then Natasha hit him. “Ow! The hell, Nat?”

“Coulson isn’t here, so I made an executive decision as your superior officer to do what he would’ve done were he here, which is smack you upside your head,” she said.

“Are you gonna take care of the other things he’d do if he were here?” Clint waggled his eyebrows at her.

She snorted. “I know you and Phil are too commitment-phobic to drop the pretense at not being exclusive, but that doesn’t mean I have to play into it.”

“You do seem pretty gone on him,” Steve said.

Clint stabbed a finger at Steve in the reflection of the rearview mirror. “You’re gone on your best friend turned mind-controlled ex-assassin, okay, and you haven’t kissed anyone but Nat since the forties, I do not need your advice,” he said.

“Uh-huh, and who was the last person you kissed, besides Coulson?” said Steve.

“Me,” Nat said. “Madrid. Coulson wasn’t with us, he was off dealing with some energy-draining stalker in Oregon. Or was it Maine?”

“Connecticut, I thought,” said Clint.

The tablet made a ding sound, and the conversation veered off track again as Nat pulled up the latest Google Alert. "Oh, hey, looks like I'm pregnant. Knew I shouldn't have taken that complimentary butter rum ice cream float from Stalon."

"Congrats, dude," said Clint, as he negotiated a residential street.

"Who's the father?"

"You, according to Wilson," she told Steve.

“What, did we stop fighting HYDRA long enough for a round of unprotected sex?” he said.

“Nat had me send her a freaking flat iron, okay, I sent a drone into American airspace from freakin’ Ankara so Nat could straighten her hair before the battle, I think you guys had time to get freaky,” Clint said. “Uh, left here?”

“Yeah, then take the curve,” said Nat. “It’s important to keep your appearance consistent when dealing with someone coming out of a fugue state. I could’ve compromised Bucky’s recovery.”

“Uh-huh,” Clint replied, unconvinced.

Steve smiled as he watched them continue to snipe in between the give and take of directions. They reminded him of the Commandos. Bucky would like them, when he was back to himself. And he would get back to himself, because Steve wasn’t one for giving up and Natasha and Clint, with all their somewhat dubious expertise, would be with him every step of the way. Even though he knew Sam was currently doing field testing with the best wings Tony Stark could make, which is to say the best wings that could be made with current technology and maybe a few decades of future technology too, he felt a little bad that he wouldn’t be seeing it through. Sam would get along with Bucky, Steve knew he would.

Someone’s phone rang, and Steve was jerked out of his thoughts. Natasha took the steering wheel as Clint answered. “Phil, hey,” said Clint, and Steve leaned forward without thinking.

“I don’t exist anymore,” Coulson’s voice said, sounding tinny through the phone.

“You’re doing a lot of talking for someone who doesn’t exist,” said Clint. “What’s up?”

“My badge has coordinates on it and I think they’re from Fury, but May doesn’t believe me and I’m not sure what to do anymore.”

The words came in a rush, and Steve immediately felt bad for hearing them.

“Fury’s dead,” Clint said, “But then again, so are you.”

“You sound funny,” Coulson replied. “You in a car?”

“Yeah, Nat’s got the wheel, don’t worry about it.”

“Natasha is supposed to be keeping an eye on Captain Rogers,” Coulson said reproachfully.

Natasha plucked the phone from Clint’s hand. “I’m a bit busy watching the road,” she told Coulson, “but I’m pretty sure Cap didn’t jump out the back.”

“He’s with you?” Steve ducked his head and grinned, hearing the excitement in Coulson’s voice. “Shit, he can hear me, can’t he?”

“Hi, Agent Coulson,” Steve said somewhat loudly.

“Can I—?”

Natasha handed the phone back to Steve, who held it up to his ear with a grin. “Hey,” he said.

“Hi,” said Coulson. “So, uh, Hydra.”

“Yeah, turns out we’re not the only ones who refuse to die,” Steve replied, and Phil huffed a quiet laugh.

“It’s been an honor to fight them under your command, Captain.”

“It’s Steve. What’s this about coordinates?” asked Steve.

Coulson sighed. “They’re from somewhere in northern Canada. Total wilderness.”

“ETA five minutes,” Natasha said quietly.

“I’d offer to meet you there, but we have to find Bucky,” said Steve. “Do you believe enough to go there without confirmation that Fury’s alive?”

“Of course,” said Coulson.

“Then go. But, uh, don’t tell anyone you talked to me. The last thing we need is for Hydra to make you more of a target. Want to talk to Clint?”

Clint made grabby hands over his shoulder, and Coulson assented with certainty. Steve did his best not to listen, which was of course an impossibility, as they exchanged lovers’ words and goodbyes.

“Up that road,” Natasha said quietly, when Clint had hung up, and Steve spotted the sign for the national park where Bucky was hiding. Bucky Barnes, reduced to hiding in a forest and eating fast food from strangers. “Deep breaths, Rogers,” she said, not unkindly, and he felt a surge of gratitude towards her.

When he was done with his minor breakdown, he found he’d severely overestimated the time it would take to reach the park, possibly because Clint was going 80 miles per hour. He nearly had another episode of sheer anxiety when Natasha, moving as if they were stationary instead of zooming along a public road, slipped out of her seat and climbed into the back of the sedan.

“It’s going to take us a while to coax him back to the cabin,” she explained, as she pushed one of the seats down and reached into the trunk, from which she pulled two small boxes. “Clint and I are gonna hang back for a while, he’ll recognize us as killers, and he needs to feel safe right now. You’ll be going in with the ranger while Clint and I assassin-proof the cabin.”

“Unless it’s a padded cell and we remove his arm and anything he could kill, I’m not sure that’s going to be possible,” Steve said.

“That’s why me and Clint will be there,” she bared her teeth in a grin, and then threw out her arms to brace herself a second before Clint slammed on the brakes and came skidding to a stop in front of the entrance sign. A petite woman with sharp features was waiting there, and Steve practically jumped out of the car.

“Someone’s eager,” the woman said, and then craned her neck to look at Natasha. “The coolers?”

“Steve,” said Natasha, handing him the boxes, which both had nifty little fold-out handles.

He blinked at her, but she was closing the door and Clint was speeding away before he could ask. He turned to the woman. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Steve.”

“Bess,” she said, and looked at him with sympathy that made him itch with annoyance. “You look like you’re expecting the worst.”

“I am,” he said.

“I’ve seen worse,” she said, “Trust me, he’s not the worst.”

“When did you see worse?” he asked.

“Half my life,” Bess replied, as she led him away from the dirt trail and straight through the woods. Her walk was brisk, and it reminded him of SHIELD agents, half-jogging their way around to pass along memos. He wondered, for a moment, if she might be Hydra, but his instincts said no. She was continuing, “Saw a lot of fires take firemen. Saw a lot of firemen watch their friends die. Worked with people who worked the World Trade Center fire. Whole lotta PTSD.”

“You were a fireman?” Steve said. He tried to picture it, to think of the tiny woman now hopping over a fallen branch running headfirst into a burning building carrying a heavy hose, and failed. An assassin, like Natasha, that he could see. But not a firefighter.

“Smokejumper,” she replied, and then explained, “It means I parachute into the middle of nowhere and try to put out fires before anyone else shows up.”

“Sounds risky,” he said.

It also sounded like something Natasha might do, if she’d had a more normal life.

Bess shot him a look over her shoulder. “You’re keeping awfully odd company if you don’t like risks, Captain.”

“I’d ask you which company you object to, but I think that might prove your point.”

She laughed, and Steve redirected his attention to their surroundings. “Does B—does he know I’m coming?” He asked, after a long silence.

“He does,” said Bess.

Steve heard the inflection, heard the curl of the words, and knew there was a part of the story he wasn’t hearing. “And he didn’t bolt?” he asked.

Her footsteps didn’t falter, nor did the lines of her shoulders change, but _danger_ warning bells started going off in his head, and only the deeply rooted (and, he had to admit, deeply shameful) chivalric instincts that she was too delicate to be harmed keeping him from slamming her into a tree and demanding she tell him everything _right now or else_.

Maybe Nat had been right when she said thinking like that would get him killed.

But apparently not by Bess, because she sighed and said, “I promised him I would _stop_ him if he tried to hurt you, okay?”

“Stop him, or _stop_ him?” Steve asked, even though he knew the answer.

She hesitated. Then, “He’s not going to attack you. He’s—he’s Sergeant Bucky Barnes, and you’re _you_. He’s going to be fine. That’s the only reason I ever gave my word, because I know it’s not going to happen, so stop questioning your decision to come see your friend. And _you_ can stop eavesdropping, you sneaky little bugger,” she added, and Steve froze.

Bucky stepped out from behind a tree, his movements slow and stiff. His gaze was fixed unwaveringly on Steve, who had to use every fiber of his being to resist dropping the coolers and running to his friend. He didn’t know how long he stared at Bucky before Bess cleared her throat.

“Coolers,” she said. Steve realized she’d moved away a bit, now perched on a fallen tree covered in stair-step mushrooms. “And, uh, move slowly. Sergeant, I’ll stay right over here, and if you try anything, I’ll be very upset about being proven wrong,” she said.

He nodded without looking at her.

Steve ducked his head and lifted the coolers curiously. Bucky took one, flipping open the lid and pulling out a – “Is that a Coney Island hot dog?” Steve asked, staring.

“Yes,” called Bess.

“She’s a character,” Steve said to Bucky, who was looking at the hot dog like it might turn out to be a snake, and poisoned, and filled with razor blades. “Did she tell you about her being a firefighter?”

Bucky’s narrowed eyes flicked up towards him, and then he nodded.

“Hey,” said Steve, pleased, and showed Bucky the contents of the other cooler: root beer, _Hires_ root beer, the kind Steve hadn’t been able to find in New York or DC, and tall glass cups, and vanilla ice cream. “This was really nice of them,” he said. “You’re gonna like Clint and Nat, I know you are. You should’ve seen Clint’s _face_ when I said ‘gunsel’ earlier, everyone thinks I’m so innocent.”

He watched Bucky carefully as he braved a bite of the hot dog, and began mixing him a float. He was still totally silent, but he seemed less… distant, than he’d seemed at first, less ready to bolt.

Steve sat down cross-legged and tracked down the scoop for the ice cream. “I don’t know how they found Hires, it’s—oh, you know what? Bess’s friend, Nat says she runs a soda fountain, I’ll bet she did it. Apparently there’s some sort of competition, who can find the weirdest job now that, y’know, SHIELD’s gone.”

Bucky flinched slightly.

“This whole world is pretty weird,” he said quickly. “I don’t know how much of the modern world you remember, but people are obsessed with me. These people, they dress up like Tony – he’s a friend of mine, I guess, another Avenger – and they crowd around his tower holding signs. They’re nice folks, friendly, but I don’t need that going to Tony’s head,” he chuckled to himself, thinking of Tony’s comments about how Loki wanted his name up in lights. “Anyway, Clint’s boyfriend Phil, he’s got _trading cards_. Of _me_. You should’ve seen how excited he was to meet me. I bet you anything I can get Nat to turn up pictures of Phil dressed up as me.”

Bucky grunted, and Steve heard it as _now whose head is it going to, punk?_

He handed Bucky the root beer float and watched him take a sip. “’s good,” Bucky muttered after a moment.

“Yeah?” said Steve.

“Too much ice cream,” he added, before busying himself with getting another still-warm dog from the other cooler, and Steve beamed.


End file.
